Legal Help for Victims

When One Place Family Justice Center opens Oct. 29, it will be the first center of its kind in Alabama. The mantra of the movement is to wrap victims in services. Too often, well-meaning service providers operate in a vacuum without integrating their responses to victims' needs. The goals of family justice centers are to not only conveniently co-locate services under one roof, but also to integrate services to meet the entire spectrum of victims' needs.

Traditionally, one service offered at family justice centers is legal representation involving protection orders and divorces. While these cases are fundamental to the immediate safety and the emotional well-being of victims, their long-term transition to becoming survivors requires assessing and addressing all of their legal needs.

For example, recently I saw a woman who had been badly beaten by her husband, who had been convicted of domestic violence against her a year earlier. Nevertheless, they continued to live together, even after his criminal conviction.